Scamming the Horny Panda.

Saw this on this week's News of the Wierd and it made me laugh.

Scamming the Horny Panda: One trick that zookeepers have used to get male pandas interested in mating with dowdier females (according to a December dispatch from Sichuan, China, in Australia's The Age) is to let an attractive female roam around a pen, leaving her scent, and then, in darkness, with the male in the pen and frisky at the scent, to introduce the less attractive female into the pen, back-end first, so that the pre-excited male will quickly begin copulating. Said zookeeper Zhang Hemin, "When the males find out (that they've just mated with unintended partners), they get very angry and start fighting the female. We have had to use firecrackers and a water hose to separate them." [The Age (Melbourne), 12-17-06]

Who knew that Pandas were so finicky about their sex partners?

I am dying to know what an "ugly panda" looks like. I just can't imagine that.

I also love how the Panda's reaction to discovering that he's been tricked is roughly the same as any human reaction to being put in the same situation.

Don't try to trick a Panda. They hate that.